Disease and Disorders that can be treated by Acupuncture

According National Institutes of Health (NIH), acupuncture is among the oldest healing practice in the world. In addition, the 2007 National Health Interview Survey, which included a comprehensive survey of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) use by Americans, an estimated 3.1 million U.S. adults and 150,000 children had used acupuncture in the previous year. And its popularity has been growing each year. (Here is the NIH source: Acupuncture: An Introduction.)

However, many Americans are still not clear on what can be treated by acupuncture, and with all the information out there online, sometimes it is just hard to figure out who to trust. Yesterday, I came cross a report from World Health Organization (WHO) with title “Acupuncture: Review and Analysis of Reports on Controlled Clinical Trials”. Although it is a 87 pages report, the core parts that covers most of the information we care about are within the first 27 pages. If you have time, please take a look and you might learn something interesting. This report was done in Italy in 1996. Although it was almost 20 years ago, but with limited English reference for acupuncture or Traditional Chinese Medicine, it is still one of the better reference out there. Chapter 3, Disease and Disorders that can be treated by Acupuncture, is what most people care about, so let me share this chapter here.

1. Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which acupuncture has been proved through controlled trials—to be an effective treatment:

3. Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which there are only individual controlled trials reporting some therapeutic effects, but for which acupuncture is worth trying because treatment by conventional and other therapies is difficult:

Chloasma

Choroidopathy, central serous

Colour blindness

Deafness

Hypophrenia

Irritable colon syndrome

Neuropathic bladder in spinal cord injury

Pulmonary heart disease, chronic

Small airway obstruction

4. Diseases, symptoms or conditions for which acupuncture may be tried provided the practitioner has special modern medical knowledge and adequate monitoring equipment: